Vegan Viands #16: Garlicky Garbanzo Gobblers

This week while meal planning, I decided that I was bored with everything we've been eating. Subsequently, 50% of the meals we're eating this week will be new. I also made a new dinner last night, though it's not quite blog-worthy. I'm hoping that at least one of the three new meals will show up here, as I've been a blogging slacker. (Seriously, this semester has been rough.)

Unfortunately, our first new meal isn't until Wednesday (then Thursday and Saturday, too), which didn't really help my food boredom. So, I went digging through the stacks of recipes I have sitting around just waiting to be tried and found a simple snack food that I could serve as an appetizer while a friend came over to watch some basketball with us.

These crispy chickpeas* are easy and delicious, and can be seasoned any way you'd like (a simple google search will lead you to a crazy number of flavoring ideas). Plus, using canned chickpeas makes the prep time practically non-existent.

Garbanzo Gobblers
Ingredients
2, 15 oz. cans chickpeas/garbanzo beans
scant 1/4 c. extra light olive oil
6 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 tsp. salt, rounded
dash of pepper

Directions
Preheat oven to 450.
1. Drain and rinse the chickpeas.
2. Pat them dry between layers of paper towels. Remove any loose skins.
3. Pour chickpeas and all other ingredients into a bowl, stirring well to combine.
4. Spread chickpeas on a baking sheet in one layer. Bake 30-40 minutes or until crunchy, stirring every 10 minutes.

Helpful Hints

• The garbanzo beans in my cans were quite small. They took closer to 30 minutes. However, the bigger the beans, they longer they will take. 
• A lot of similar recipes tel you to remove all of the skins of the beans. I didn't do this and wouldn't recommend it. First, it is tedious and time-consuming. Second, the skins create some fun crunchy bits. 
• I needed to move my pan down a rack in my oven (farther away from the heating element). You may need to do the same. 
• Shana's favorite part about these is how the beans didn't cook perfectly evenly. Thus, some were super crunchy and some had a bit of chew to them still. It does make for some fun textural elements. 

* I could have called this post something like crispy chickpeas,  but it didn't have quite the amount of alliteration that I wanted. After all, I established long ago that I'm a fan of alliteration.

The post "Vegan Viands #16: Garlickey Garbanzo Gobblers" first appeared on Maggie's LesVegan Kitchen.